Nightflower Candor

It will only be a few minutes, she told me, please, have a seat, but I didn’t reply. The painting was crooked on the wall. I stood from my chair and tilted the frame to make it level but it quickly slid back into its old way.

            A small tapping. My pet tarantula Chuck looked up at me in his enclosure. He tapped more and danced about wildly so I ignored him. This was why we were here.

            To fix this behavior.

            I looked up symptoms online but couldn’t find anything. I asked friends but they didn’t know either as they owned dogs or cats or even parrots but not tarantulas.

            I tried disregarding the skewed frame and focusing on the painting inside. Oceanic waves splashing against coastal rocks in an ethereal gaze of dreamlike colors. Sunrays piercing dark clouds like daggers. A desperate ship in the distance seeking shore. Lighthouse? Hard to say. The artistry was magnificent, the moods eloquent, but the unavoidable slant made it all appear silly.

            I removed it from the wall and furthered my investigation. Loose nail, of course. I marched out and retraced my steps back to my truck where a collection of tools waited like tiny saviors. My heroic return was hushed and forgettable.

            “Mr. Stubonn,” a voice said, “We had called you.”

            “Tell Doc that I’ll only be a minute,” I said.

            “Of course,” the voice said before retreating down the hall.

            I pulled out the nail easily and placed it beside Chuck. He tapped again on the plastic of his cage and again I ignored him. He would have to do backflips for my attention but suddenly he began trying. His initial attempts were futile but growing closer as if refining technique. I ignored him, again, and smeared spackle on the hole in the wall like my father taught me, and wielding a pencil and tape measure like sword and shield, I challenged the drywall to a duel.

            “Jeremy,” a softer voice said.

            “I’ll only be a minute,” I said, measuring the perfect placement. It needed to be aligned with the inspirational poster to the left and the pillar to the right. I measured the painting twice and noticed a new portion of the landscape. There was an island. Was the ship sailing away or toward it? Impossible to tell. The waves moved.

            “Beautiful, don’t you think?”

            “It was crooked,” I said.

            “We’ve been wanting to fix that but needed your help.”

            “My help?”

            “We thought you might notice.”

            “Chuck is just right over there if you want to do whatever tests you need to do. I’ll only be a minute.”

            “You said he was acting funny?”

            “Really funny. Just look.”

            Chuck was just standing there, looking at us with eight black eyes. I stopped measuring and walked over. I tapped on the enclosure but got no reaction. He just kept staring at me. Sometimes I hated him. I went back to my measurements.

            “He’s usually much different,” I said. “Dancing and tapping. Always tapping!”

            “Tapping how? And dancing?”

            “He bounces around his cage like a maniac, jumping, tapping—slamming his little legs against the plastic.”

            “Do you let him out often?”

            “Not… lately,” I said. Displeased with my conflicting measurements of the space between the pillar and the inspirational poster, I did it a third time. And a fourth. Almost satisfied, nearly but not quite, I measured the distance between the floor and the ceiling again despite nothing in the room having changed. I measured the chair too for assurance.

            I finally settled on numbers. I scribbled some math. I found where the hanging nail needed to be located for the perfect presentation. I penciled a dot.

            “Do you think he enjoys being out?”

            “You’re the doc.”

            “I think he does.”

            “Are you going to do tests or not? I’ll only be a minute.”

            “Letting Chuck out is the test.”

            “Have at it.”

            “I need your help.”

            “To open it?”

            “To open it.”

            I placed the nail against my pencil mark and ignored the soft voice as it began gaining an edge. I ignored Chuck, I ignored the whole damn room. The whole world. Only the job existed and the job was to fix. I hammered the nail too hard in frustration and had to adjust it. Now it was loose, again. Again and again. Back to the beginning.

            “I don’t understand why you need my help!”  I said.

            “It’s important we do this together.”

            I yanked the nail out and spackled the hole like my father taught me. Erase and start over. Start over and erase. I decided that absolute certainty was an illusion and the nail being just above mathematical perfection was just fine. I sighed. I guess I had no choice. I allowed steady breathing to take control. Another pencil mark, another placing of the nail. Delicate was the touch this time.

            Delicate was the touch.

            I looked at Doc. I looked at Chuck.

            “Here,” I said. “You unhook these latches to lift the top.”

            “Excellent. I’m proud of you.”

            Chuck shyly climbed out of the enclosure and explored the carpet patterns. His eight black eyes gazed about, no longer fixed on me, enjoying the world around him, but still he crawled onto my boot and up my leg in shared comfort. He perched on my shoulder and seemed content, behavior subsiding into something easier lived beside.

            “This is kind of cool,” I said. Sometimes I loved him. The island in the painting seemed bigger now, the ship in calmer seas. The clouds less. And yes, there was a lighthouse.

            “Time to hang the mirror back up.”